by Alan Catlin

Not the weird ones
like Macbeth’s three
witches

but the McGuire ones

No one was more famous
than they were
once up on a time

though now
barely a memory

perfect Warhol subjects
as only he could know
fame’s transitory nature

All of them dressed
in formal black

with full veils

Maybe at a funeral ?
But who smiles at funerals ?

Or are the identical smiles
just reflexive on their part
whenever a camera is near ?

Or are they
the ultimate Pop Art
Polaroids

Maybe on the way to
one of Capote’s infamous
black and white parties
celebrating his latest
face lift

fresh wounds still showing
stitches as well

by Alan Catlin

Diane lied to Viva

she lied to all her unclothed
subjects

saying she would only shoot
their faces

That nothing would show

She always revealed everything

Naked from the waist up,
Viva looks as if she is nodding

deeply drugged
maybe just this side of overdosed

or dying

eyes rolled all the way up into her head
under half-closed lids

When she rises
from where she is lying
during the shoot,

this late portrait
could have been
retitled:

Revenant Rising

by Alan Catlin

We walk on black rock,
63+
in dense, gray fog.

Walking, our feet seek
purchase, to balance, as
they slide on tide-exposed
moss wrapped about
clotted weeds.

Pausing, we listen to
the lowing tide, the waves
receding.

See the fog
enveloping the clay,
the eroding cliffs.

I stand, alone, on a rock,
feeling as if I am becoming
one with the mist and
the fog and the waves.

From a widow’s walk
in my mind, my wife
watches the sun rising
from the sea without me.

by David Lehman

Caviar for the Generals
     for T.W.

1.
The Known Universeshould become better known
because it is caviar for the generals, a phrase that sets off
a montage of images starting with Ike smoking four packs
a day on the fifth of June 1944 (unfiltered Camels)
and a champagne brunch in the corner office at General Electric,
a great American company in its postwar heyday.
Neither Ike nor GE figures in The Known Universe
by Terence Winch except to the extent that it is caviar
for the general, and the generals that first came to mind
when I wrote that line were Ike and GE, and it was
getting light out, and I could hear the garbage truck
make its slow way through the alley off Dyckman Street.
The guy driving the truck, a red-haired boy drinker,
chose between the Catholic church
and the tavern on the corner, and peaked at seventeen.

2.
Among my favorite Winch poems is “Small Potatoes,”
which is what Hyman Roth says to Michael Corleone
about someone the latter wants bumped off.
“Small Potatoes” is not small beer.  It is not small time.
It is better than sour grapes, spilt milk, and the apple of my eye.
It is living large with the gusto of a fat man having dinner.
It is dining on caviar with hard-boiled eggs, onions, rice crackers,
and halves of yellow potatoes that were boiled and then chilled.
Add a glass of champagne and hold hands with your wife
knowing you will get to read The Known Universe
in the hammock later in this dream.

3.
Caviar to the general (Hamlet, act II, scene 2)
means a critical success, Milton’s “fit readers but few,”
and if caviar is an acquired taste, then both halves
of the phrase are misleading except as a stimulant.
When I interviewed the author about his writing “process,”
which is a word that both of us detest, he said,
“You have to break a lot of eggs to make an omelette.
You have to break a lot of legs to make it in the mob.
That’s neither here nor there.  So much depends upon
whether the caviar is red or black, did it cost a fortune,
and how was it served, and with what beverage ?
I cast my vote for James Joyce on Christmas Eve.
The taste for caviar is general like the snow in Ireland
and, in the tavern on the corner (‘The Scholar Gypsy’),
you serve vespers because you are the bartender hero
who expands the known universe in his spare time.”